


get fresh

by phinnia



Category: House, M.D. - Fandom
Genre: M/M, friendship/UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-21
Updated: 2007-10-21
Packaged: 2017-10-15 09:43:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/159534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phinnia/pseuds/phinnia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wilson deals with an addiction ... to mints.</p>
            </blockquote>





	get fresh

**Author's Note:**

> After eights are chocolate covered mint candies from Canada that I miss terribly. Freud is Freud and probably wouldn't approve of his name being taken in vain, but did he ever approve of anything, really? Queer Eye probably wouldn't have been as grouchy about it though. [More about triboluminescence here.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboluminescence)

If someone had asked James Wilson why he always carried around mints, he would probably have mumbled something about first impressions, which would have likely trailed off into a noncommittal shrug and a wide-eyed expression that translated into 'doesn't everybody? Or at least, everybody except House?'

The honest truth was that he really couldn't remember exactly when it had started, or why. If he thought about it long enough he'd probably have to say it was sometime around his bar mitzvah, which probably meant it was something to do with girls, because that summer was definitely the time girls had started to become interesting. (Boys had started to become interesting too, but that was a few years later, and he'd definitely had the mints by then: he'd discovered that wintergreen lifesavers made sparks on your tongue the same fall he'd been on the swim team, forever linking triboluminescence with the smell of wet towels, chlorine and lump-in-throat-awkwardness as he tried not to stare.) So if it was before the swim team (high school freshman year) and after the bar mitzvah, the mints thing probably had to do with his older brother Mike - who had come home from his first year of college that summer and had seemed impossibly cool and wise and worth idolizing to the young and uncertain Jimmy Wilson.

That was where it ended, because he couldn't remember _what_ drew him to do it beyond that initial emulation of Mike, and thinking about Mike was painful enough these days, so he never tried. In any case, the mints were always there, usually in the left pocket of his lab coat or suit pants or jeans, a comfortingly normal, reassuring presence. He'd gone through different kinds over the years trying to find one that suited him - tic-tacs (too small), mentos (too squishy), lifesavers (too awkward), after eight candies (too messy - the chocolate liked to melt in his hands, and they were damn hard to find outside of Canada, too) - before settling on altoids. And since altoids were more or less the perfect incarnation of mint, he decided to stick with those. They were assertive, widely available, had no chocolate to melt, and they even came in a convenient little tin which could be reused after the fact.

This was the explanation he'd given to House when House had asked that question one seemingly inconsequential Tuesday afternoon nearly ten years after they'd first met (and nearly ten years after House, by proxy, had met Wilson's mint habit.) Wilson only found the question slightly odd, more of a 'why now?' kind of wondering rather than a 'why ask at all?' kind of wondering, and maybe that in itself should have been a warning that maybe he spent too much time around House in the first place, given that normal people don't tend to pay that sort of single- minded attention to the harmless breath freshening habits of their friends, and other normal people didn't have to fend off this type of bizarre questioning, either; instead other normal people probably ... stayed married or something. Whatever it was that Wilson didn't do.

And now he was totally confused. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and looked up at House again, and down at the metal box of altoids in his hand. "What was that you said? Sorry."

House rolled his eyes and bounced the tennis ball off the wall that divided their offices. "What I said was, do you use those things as bait, or what?"

"Bait? What?"

"Well, it can't be both."

"What the hell are you talking about, House?"

House sighed deeply and gave Wilson the look that he usually reserved for Foreman and particularly dense clinic patients. "The mints. The ones you obsessively carry in your pocket, and have since I met you."

"What about them?"

"Why?"

"... why not? They're mints. What does it matter?"

"It obviously matters to you, otherwise you wouldn't keep buying them."

"I don't know. I just ... do. I always have."

"Tradition is a terrible excuse for anything." House bounced the ball against the wall again. "Why do doctors wear white coats? Because they always have."

"Because they want to look professional. At least some of us do."

"So you're saying the mints are professional? Are they part of some wardrobe thing, a set of accessories for the new metrosexual doctor? The department heads special on Queer Eye have a thing about mints?"

"No."

"There was actually a department heads special on Queer Eye and I missed it? That's a relief. Carson gives me hives. I'm surprised Cuddy didn't try to make it mandatory."

"There wasn't. Although now that you mention it, I should suggest it to her." Wilson laughed and tossed a mint in his mouth. "I don't know. I just like them. Why do you have lollipops in your mouth all the time?"

"Because I have an oral fixation and I can't get on my knees to give blowjobs anymore." House shrugged as if it were the most natural thing in the world and tossed the tennis ball lazily between his hands.

At that, Wilson nearly choked, coughing for a long moment before sucking in huge lungfuls of air.

"You asked." The corner of House's lip twitched in something resembling amusement.

"I did." He wiped tears away from his eyes for a moment and swallowed hard, twice. There was a strange aftertaste in his mouth - anxiety and mint and the faintest whisper of chlorine. "Is this ... something that you ..." His hand trailed a lazy, uncertain line in the air; he coughed and decided to start again. "This ... oral fixation. You've had this for a while?"

House tipped his chair back. He was balancing the tennis ball in the crook of the cane with seeming nonchalance, but Wilson could feel that blue-eyed stare burning holes in his head. "Well, they don't happen overnight, if that's what you're asking. Some people - usually religious crazies these days - say you can get over them, but I'm of the opinion they're just part of your genes."

"I never knew ... that you, ah, had this, this ... thing."

"Well, I don't kiss and tell." The tennis ball bounced off the wall again, and Wilson grabbed it before it could hit him in the head. As he handed it back he realized that Greg's eyes were the same blue as pool water.

Instead of taking the tennis ball, House picked up the tin of mints that Wilson had abandoned on the desk instead, lazily shaking them back and forth a moment before looking up again. "So that's why."

"What?"

"The mints. You just keep them around to have something to put in your mouth."

"Um. Yeah." he coughed, clearing his throat a little weakly. "I ... have something of an oral fixation myself."

"See, Jimmy, this is why we have these little chats." House got to his feet and walked around the desk. He opened the mints and took one out, inspecting it for a moment, rolling it around between his long fingers. "Because we _learn_ things." Finding the mint satisfactory, he tossed it up in the air and caught it on his tongue, curling the tip around it protectively before it disappeared into his mouth.

Wilson swallowed again and didn't say a word.

"You think that's impressive?" Again with the ghost of a smile. "You should see what I can do with licorice whips. Used to be able to tie sailing knots with my tongue."

James' own voice sounded ridiculously far away in his ears. "I'll, um, pick you up at seven?"

"I'm not wearing a tie. And make it six-thirty." House dropped the tin back on the desk with a clatter and headed toward the door. "I had an early lunch."


End file.
